The Butcher's Sons

Bound by blood but separated by secrets, brothers—Dickie, Walt and Adlai—run a butcher shop for their alcoholic father, whose broken spirit has isolated him from the world. When Dickie makes a rash decision, involving an organized crime family, a chain of events ensues that changes the brothers’ lives and forces them to come together—at first, with a sense of camaraderie, but ultimately, with something much fiercer, more brutal. The Butcher’s Sons is a gritty, intimate portrait of three young Irish-American brothers whose lives irrevocably change during a heat wave in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, circa 1930.

Reviews and Praise

"A brutal and lyrically gorgeous story of three Irish brothers’ during the 1930s as they transgress social and moral norms to satisfy their desires, despite the dire consequences. - John Copenhaver, Lambda Literary Review

"At once gritty, poetic, and romantic, Hess' masterful, elegant style weaves these diverse elements into a seamless narrative that touches the heart of what it means to be human." - Kirkus Reviews

"This more modern retelling of King Lear brings the kingdom down to the streets, but the heart-wrenching cruelty of fate shows up in the same Shakespearean way...Hess weaves all three of these points of view together under the sweltering heat of Hell’s Kitchen in the 1930’s. The Butcher’s Sons is told with such vibrancy and aroma, you can almost feel the sweat seeping out of your skin." Luke Goldstein Blogcritics Editors Pick 5 Star Review

"The Butcher's Sons is a poetically somber read, infused with the violent clamor of New York in the 30's and the gritty individualism of three Irish brothers, born, bred and surviving the street-game." Literary Fiction Book Review

"In his brutal and moving third novel, Scott Hess exhibits exciting new range by tackling the tense, dramatic story of three wholly different brothers living and working together in Hell's Kitchen in the 1930s. The risks for these ‘Butcher's Sons’ are many, and the stakes sky high, as each finds his own definition of what it is to be a man.” – *Helen Schulman, New York Times bestselling author of This Beautiful Life*

"The Butcher’s Sons manages to tell a thousand human stories through three young brothers in Hell’s Kitchen. Their struggles for success and respect, their yearning desires for sex and love, are compelling and familiar and disturbingly influential—they make a reader want to throw a punch and then go get laid." –*L.A. Fields, author of My Dear Watson*

"A brilliant storyteller, Hess cuts a brutal, vital keyhole into the lives and loves of a lost era with the emotional craft of a master builder, and the gentle caress of a poet. A deeply beautiful book, I fell in love with *The Butcher’s Sons*.”–*David Drake, author of The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me*

"The complexity of love — brotherly, fatherly, romantic — told through the eyes of brothers Dickie, Walt, Adlai, and their father Pat in *The Butcher’s Sons* is at once universal and compellingly particular. It's a wallop of a read, packed with beauty and brutality — often in the same sentence — and poetically wrought by Scott Alexander Hess.”–*Jamie Brickhouse, author of Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir*